February 5th 2014. Pick of the Day.
New York City's premiere resource for classic film screenings in the metropolitan area. Offering reviews, recommendations, venues and a host of links keeping classic film and the silver screens alive.
Mebbe...mebbe if I stop using the word winter it'll just go away on its own? Mebbe? Go...go away...please?
Goddam Canada! It's all their fault! First Bieber and now this friggin' sleetstorm that's going from door to door in search of the firstborn! Whatehvz! Today's series include MoMA's short-run Roadshow: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 60's and their ongoing Auteurist History of Film, and the Film Society's opening salvo in their Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema. The excellence worthy of your sopping wet hikery be thus;
Film Forum
THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947) Dir; Orson Welles
MoMA
BLACK GIRL (1965) Dir; Ousmane Sembene
FINIAN'S RAINBOW (1968) Dir; Francis Ford Coppola
Film Society of Lincoln Center
THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1964) Dir; Wojciech Has
CAMOUFLAGE (1976) Dir; Krzsyztof Zanussi
MAN OF IRON (1981) Dir; Andrzej Wajda
Today's Pick? Being as today's climatic ugliness is already a bitter reminder of ex-Soviet Bloc weather patterns, I'm going to skip the inaugural triple-bill in Martin Scorsese's excellent focus on Kino Polski and instead choose a film that now serves as significant footnote in an otheriwise hugely impactful career. Francis Ford Coppola was the first of the Film School Brats of the 60's to step directly behind the camera, bypassing the traditional ladder-climbing from, say, the prop department to editing to the big bullhorn itself. He did this by availing himself of any and all opportunities that came his way, like accepting Roger Corman's offer to turn $40,000 into a respectable PSYCHO-ripoff (DEMENTIA 13) and employing extra funding to expand his UCLA thesis film, YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW, into a feature distributed by Warner Bros./Seven Arts. It was then that Jack Warner, who seemed anyway to be the last of the Moguls still in charge of his studio, decided to finally put a particular musical before the cameras that he'd held the option on for nearly twenty years. Fred Astaire was coaxed out of retirement from big screen musicals to lend some star power to what was then a waning genre at the box office, a tried and true genre that had at one point seemed creatively inexhaustable and commercially bulletproof. The 60's taught the studios otherwise, as the influence of the European New Wave at decade's advent increasingly eroded what had been the American cinema's core audience, replacing it with one that desired less glam and fantasy and more grit and unhappy endings. The resulting effort did nothing to stem the decline of the genre, but it did so-so box office, gave Fred Astaire a last showcase, helped fund Coppola's fledgling Zoetrope Studios and introduced him to a nerdy little kid named George. You know the rest. So for its status as last gasp of a once-fashionable form, and seed which birthed a mightier oak, I make it my Pick today.
Francis Ford Coppola's FINIAN'S RAINBOW screens today at MoMA as part of their series Roadshow: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 60's. And it won't cost ya a pot o' gold to attend yeah that was a bad idea I'm shutting this down now.
For more info on these and all NYC's remaining classic film screenings in January '14 click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. And be sure to follow me on both Facebook, where I provide further info and esoterica on the rep film circuit and star birthdays, and Twitter, where I provide a daily feed for the day's screenings and other blathery. Back with a brand new Pick tomorrow, til then Hazmat suits. Just wear Hazmat suits. Til July.
-Joe Walsh
P. S. Should you be feeling charitable during this harsh weather period please remember to check in with the good folks over at Occupy Sandy. Some of our NY neighbors are still feeling the effects of last year's hurricane. Be a mensch.
